Sony Xperia 10 VIII review

Display

Very little seems to have changed in the display department. Sony gave up on its unique 21:9 aspect ratio last year, and it is seemingly not coming back. The display panel is the much more conventional 19.5:9. This does take away from the uniqueness quite a bit, but seeing how the display is still pretty small with a 6.1-inch diagonal, we think that this aspect ratio makes sense.

With a resolution of 1080 x 2340 pixels at this diagonal, the density ends up being a very sharp 422 ppi.

Sony says that it has added automatic color adjustment to the surroundings for this generation, which is a bit hard to test in practice. We won't delve into it too deeply.

The rest of the display specs look pretty familiar on paper as well. It's an OLED panel of the simpler LTPS variety, so no truly dynamic refresh rate switching here. You still get a maximum of 120Hz, which is pretty much industry-standard at this point. Though, it is perhaps worth remembering that this is just the second Xperia 10 generation to offer a high refresh rate. 10-bit color depth with Sony's own Triluminos display technology (whatever that actually entails in 2026) and some rather vague HDR certification on top.

Sony's Xperia 10 has never topped brightness charts, but Sony has always delivered decent-enough brightness for these phones to be usable outdoors, so we can't complain too much.

This year, the Xperia 10 VIII allegedly brings 50% higher brightness than last year. That we can test.

In auto mode, with a 75% window (which is our standardized test), we got 1,509 nits max on the Xperia 10 VIII, which is markedly better than the Xperia 10 VII and plenty for a comfortable outdoor experience. We didn't see any notable boost with a 10% window, which is unusual for an OLED display.

We measured a minimum brightness output of around 1.8 nits at point white, which is decent, though not great. There is an extra-dim display option buried in the Accessibility settings menu that brings down that figure to a much more competitive 1.0 nits or so.

Refresh rate

Sony seemingly hasn't improved the high refresh rate handling for this second generation of 120Hz Xperia 10 display, and it's not like they got it right the first time around. There is still just one option in Settings - High refresh rate On or Off. The On mode offers some automatic switching but only between 120Hz and 60Hz (no middle 90Hz). Also, the phone seems to stick to 120Hz operation more often than not, even when the content being displayed could work well with a lower refresh rate to save some battery. Apps like Chrome and YouTube do feature some automatic switching down to 60Hz to conserve energy. Just don't expect to get automatic switching in most third-party apps.

Actually, get this: the phone automatically switches down to 60Hz most frequently when it detects a game. This sounds like the opposite of what it should be doing. Buried deep in the Developer options menu is a toggle that turns off the 60Hz limit for games. Flipping it on allowed most of our test games to run at 120Hz. So, at least there's that.

HDR Video

There is definitely some HDR video support, and it seems to work just fine in apps like YouTube and Netflix.

Battery life

Battery endurance has never really been a particular highlight of the Xperia 10 line. The Xperia 10 VIII technically gets a better Active Use Score than its predecessor, but the delta is small. You can reliably count on one day away from the charger, but not much else, even though Sony's marketing is generally focused around the two-day mark. Most competitors in the segment tend to offer anything from slightly better to markedly better battery life.

Charging speed

Sony tends to keep a tight lip when it comes to the Xperia 10's charging capabilities. All we really know is that it supports standard USB Power Delivery (PD), which is always great to see.

Sony does not provide a formal maximum wattage rating, though. In our testing, we found that a 30W PD charger is perfectly adequate to saturate the charging capabilities of the Xperia 10 VIII. Measuring the charging cycle, we never really saw a spike above 26W, with the phone spending most of its time around 19W.

That's not a huge amount of current by modern standards, and it shows. At least, Sony seems to be tuning its charging in small increments every generation, achieving some marginally better results. That's encouraging and everything, but even so, the Xperia 10 VIII remains one of the slowest-charging devices in its price range.

Sony is kind of one of the pioneers when it comes to battery longevity. We remember the longstanding Qnovo partnership and believe many of the core ideas from that design made their way across the industry. While we don't really see any real innovation in the space from Sony these days, the strong foundation is very much present.

The system now carries the much more generic Battery Care title and offers a choice between a constant charging cap, a mode with a flexible time-based limiter and a full auto mode that learns your charging pattern.

The goal of the system is to reduce the time the battery spends charged at 100%, since that is generally what causes the most degradation to the Li Ion chemistry.

Sony also has a bunch of proprietary charging protections in place to keep the battery reasonably cool, as high temperature is another significant source of battery degradation.

The official marketing tosses around an "up to 4-year battery health" promise, which we see no reason not to believe, especially if you also make sure not to leave the battery absolutely empty for any prolonged time and not expose it to temperature extremes. Just the usual sensible things.

Speakers - loudness and quality

Sony originally introduced its dual front-facing stereo speaker setup with the Xperia 10 V and has kept it mostly unchanged ever since.

Having the speakers facing the user is not something you see too often, and it certainly provides a great stereo effect, great channel separation and excellent balance. It's the perfect location and orientation for multimedia consumption.

While this particular Xperia 10 speaker setup has generally been getting louder over the past couple of generations, this time we measured a marked decrease in loudness. Nothing major in practical terms, but still worth noting. It still gets the same Good score on our scale.

Actual sound quality, however, seems a bit better than last year. Sony says the new setup should have about 30% richer and deeper bass. Then again, it should also apparently be up to 15% louder. The latter is not the case as far as we can tell, but we definitely think the new model sounds much cleaner.

In keeping with its audio pedigree, Sony incorporates a range of audio optimizations and codecs into the mix. There is 360 Reality Audio, which unfortunately only works with a limited selection of subscription music services. There is even a complementary feature that claims it can upmix regular stereo audio into a 360-degree compatible one. Sony's DSEE Ultimate general audio upscaler is also on board. There is also support for Qualcomm AptX Adaptive and both Hi-Resolution Audio and Hi-Resolution Audio wireless.

Of course, the Xperia 10 VIII gets a 3.5mm audio jack, which we are sure will still be appreciated by many prospective buyers.

Use the Playback controls to listen to the phone sample recordings (best use headphones). We measure the average loudness of the speakers in LUFS. A lower absolute value means a louder sound. A look at the frequency response chart will tell you how far off the ideal "0db" flat line is the reproduction of the bass, treble, and mid frequencies. You can add more phones to compare how they differ. The scores and ratings are not comparable with our older loudspeaker test. Learn more about how we test here.

Connectivity

The Xperia 10 VIII is a 5G device. It supports SA and NSA Sub-6 connectivity. Our review unit is a single-SIM model, but as far as we know, like previous generations, a dual Nano-SIM variant will exist for some markets. There is a microSD storage slot on the SIM tray as well. There is eSIM support on our unit.

The Xperia 10 VIII has GPS, GLONASS, GALILEO, BDS and QZSS support for location services. Local connectivity includes dual-band Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2 with LE, aptX HD, aptX Adaptive, Hi-Res Audio and LDAC support. There is NFC on board as well as a 3.5mm audio jack. No FM radio receiver, though.

The Type-C port is backed up by a USB 2.0 connection, which is a theoretical maximum of 480 Mbps throughput. Don't expect anything else fancy either, like video output over USB Alt mode.

The Xperia 10 VIII has a good set of onboard sensors. There is a BOSCH bmi26x accelerometer and gyroscope combo, an AKM ak0991x magnetometer and compass combo, and a SENSORTEK stk3a5x light and proximity combo. That's a proper hardware proximity sensor and not a virtual one. There is no barometer.

So basically, it's the exact same as last year's model, which is no surprise. We don't think Sony changed anything on the main logic board.